Ultra 3D Photorealism

Memories are the foundation upon which we build our present and future.  Photos help unlock hidden or forgotten memories.  One thing our photos don't convey is the depth of the incident and alternate angles.  Since we know our minds can play tricks on us when it comes to remembering, we wanted to bring the memory into a true 3D space because we are not flat and don’t think representative images should be either.  This has been gnawing at my subconscious for weeks, but I couldn’t figure out how to fix the problem.  That all changed when I found out exactly what’s involved in diorama building.

I had started researching dioramas when I realized that Snob was never going to finish constructing our F-One cars.  His ever-increasing list of vehicle demands as payment bonuses was becoming ridiculous.  He has requested a hovercraft and aircraft carrier just this morning!  In exchange for those, in addition to the other vehicles he has already requested, he has promised to bump his completion rate to 19% every 3 years.  The situation has become untenable so I am actively searching for a specialized model builder who can replace him.  I astutely concluded that someone who had the skills to build dioramas could build our F-One cars.

The right front wheel mechanic has his gun in the air.  That's poor form.

All we really needed was to slightly scale up that car and pit crew, and then we would have had everything required to go racing.  It turns out the technology to scale something larger and also animate it doesn’t yet exist.  AcMo is working on making that happen now.

Concurrently, we’re also attempting to perfect a new technique to supplant photographs.  Our experience has taught us that 3D printers will wander off the reservation and get into all kinds of trouble if you allow them to sit idle for too long.  The power cord is not the permanent tether you think it is.  Because we haven’t been able to design any parts that need to be printed, all of our printers were preparing to cut their cords and flee.

I activated scramble mode in my head so that I could think of any use for the printers to keep them in line.  That desperate brainstorm caused me to stumble on the possibility of printing dioramas.  Dioramas are cool because you can use them to study situations and learn details that may not have been obvious at first glance.  Crafting them is a difficult and time-consuming task.  Getting all of the details correct takes great skill and patience.  No one at AcMo has the skill, conviction, or patience to sit for weeks in front of a diorama while it is completed.

Recognizing our numerous weaknesses, I did what innovators do:  find someone or something else to do the work after forming the big picture.  Our new potential method is faster and far less labor intensive than traditional diorama construction.  We 3D print dioramas, or at least we hope to once we solve some of the complications.

The pit lane reporter is at risk of being clipped with his back to the action.

First there are some issues with the scanning technique because it currently takes 90 service hours to scan the scene so that it can be accurately printed.  That is a long time to be forced to hold a handheld scanner.  We’ve seen a serious rise in carpal tunnel claims since we started testing this.  I hope to learn that the lab can build us several hundred laser scanner equipped drones to cover every area of a track.  The drones would slice our scanning time into something more reasonable.

We hope to use a similar design, except ours will be painted Riviera Blue with AcMo decals plastered all over it.  The drone scanners are the first step toward a fully realized virtual 3D environment.  Soon we’ll never have to go outside again to know what is happening out there.

The deal breaker at the moment is that we can’t figure out how to print the dioramas because each one of our test patterns has failed in the exact same manner.  It appears that every one of these brand new printers is defective.  Each time I try to print a test pattern to check my work, I end up with this:

The pattern isn’t 3D and doesn’t come close to representing the scanned image of the shop floor I’ve been trying to print for the last few weeks.  This obstacle is maddening because I could have hand built the diorama by now.

We hope to be able to crank out a detailed diorama such as the ones pictured above within a matter of minutes instead of years if we can ever get past the test pattern.  The plan is to take a printer or two thousand to major races around the world to recreate moments from the race that can be ready for pickup by the time the race concludes.  This will allow teams and fans alike to capture every angle of the memory in a more immersive fashion than any photo could have.  Our technology will also redefine the essence of a selfie.  Once we have finalized our weather control algorithms, we will be able to add that as an option to the dioramas.

AcMo is on the cusp of disrupting the diorama market and creating a new genre of motorsport memory collection.  We need this to succeed so it can be a positive distraction from the repeated setbacks with the AcMo affiliated (we may have to cut our losses) Scuderia F-One program.